...you should think real hard about why she has less credibility.
It's common knowledge that Bill ran his presidency according to opinion polls, and as Not A Democrat it really looked like Hillary ran her campaign the same way. How else to explain her "I was for it before I was against it" attitude on trade and other assorted issues that Bernie revealed to be popular?
If you actually look at the statements she made about TPP being "the gold standard" etc, she was always talking about it from a hopeful perspective. I don't have my copy of Hard Choices handy, but she makes it clear that she's excited for the deal but knows that it may not be perfect and she may not actually support it in the end. That's well before the primary, and well before Bernie was on anyone's radar (and, as an aside, if anyone pushed Hillary on free trade, it was Warren rather than Sanders).
Her position then was consistent with the position she ultimately took. She was always in favor of free trade, and she always thought TPP could be good, but that individual deals are not necessarily good.
In 2012 she said this about the TPP:
This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment.
That's a pretty clear statement that she thinks that the TPP is most excellent, or that she has really low standards for international trade agreements. You really have to stretch to say that she is only being hopeful about the potential of the deal. Which is fine, because at that point she'd just spent four years negotiating the thing. I don't really expect someone to come out and say that they'd spent four years on something that might have potential, but it definitely sets her up for the flip-flop attack.
First of all, in 2012, she was Secretary of State and not really at liberty to discuss personal views. This wasn't just a case of her praising something because she had (indirectly) been involved with it and didn't want to feel bad, this was a case of her doing her job. The Secretary of State is supposed to be praising the work of the Department of State, even if they have personal, private reservations. Whereas Hard Choices, written 2013-14, after her time as SecState and long before TPP was unpopular, is much more ambiguous about the support.
Second of all, in 2012 the TPP wasn't written yet. There were drafts, but it was years out from being finalized, and there were still many contentious issues that we know changed substantially over the years. So any discussion of TPP in 2012 was implicitly only about the potential of the deal. It's like how every year I say "this is going to be a good year for the Washington Nationals!" despite not actually knowing how the year will turn out (and despite them often falling short in the end). You know when I say that that I'm not a prophet, I don't actually know if they'll make the playoffs, let alone win the World Series, I can only look at the fact that they have a pretty decent team and the framework and potential is there, and then add in a good helping of pure hope.
1) Opposition to the TPP started in 2012, so she wasn't exactly ahead of the curve. Or at least she wasn't far enough ahead that you can easily point to it as evidence of her true feelings.
2) Your argument is basically that we should ignore the 2012 statement because that was her job, and her true opinion is from 2014, which is no more compelling than the argument that her true opinion was from 2012, and her 2014 statements are just her positioning herself for the presidential run.
This is not to say that had she won, she would have reversed on the TPP. Just that arguments that she changed position out of political expediency are very easy to make stick in this instance.
In 2014, there wasn't really a broad movement against TPP except for the same old crowd who would argue against any trade agreements--and she certainly wasn't catering towards them, since her comments were unequivocally pro-free trade. It was only TPP itself that she hedged on (because, again, it didn't actually exist yet and what drafts did exist weren't public yet). Anti-TPP sentiment blossomed in 2015 when a draft was leaked, and then strengthened when Elizabeth Warren took a stand against it. So her statements expressing potential reservations came out over a year before it was an actual political issue.
A diplomat's job is to speak for their country rather than their own feelings. That's their whole point!
It's not about the media pushing a particular candidate, it's the media pushing the conflict. They might look at First Woman President vs. Overcoming Personal Tragedy and think that's enough story to last them. Alternatively, they might think that some three-way action might be the way to go. A situation that I think would be likely, since Biden v. Clinton would probably be a pretty damn boring campaign. Very similar policies and they'd both be pushing the Continuing Obama's Legacy thing to the hilt. Hell, O'Malley might actually have an edge in this hypothetical since you'd have the (relative) youth angle too.
And the media is not the only determining factor here. Iowa and NH are small regions, so getting out and pressing the flesh can get things done, Sanders' policies would be very different than what Clinton or Biden would be pitching, and the caucus system can make things interesting all on its own.
It isn't hard for the media to push conflict between candidates - and there's more to Biden then simply being the Tragedy candidate. Sure it's possible they could go for a 3 candidate race, but I don't see Bernie doing an Edwards with Biden there. Edwards ran equally with Obama and Hillary, temporarily, and I think he was more well known IIRC.
I don't think Biden vs Hillary would be boring, her fights with Obama and Bernie were a matter of degrees not difference of opinion.
No, the media isn't the only determining factor what it is is a vital aspect for candidates getting the messages out. The caucus system only works for Bernie if the media gives him exposure, before the primaries he was an unknown. With Biden in the mix he'll be the second biggest fish in the primary, one who's the previous VP and fighting of inheriting Obama's sounds like media catnip to me. They wouldn't need to push the horse race angle as hard with him nor does he rely on the press telling the public who he is. With him they don't need to go to Bernie for conflict, he was just the only one standing in '16. Which wasn't that hard to do in a race where his only non-Hillary opponents were Chafee, O'Malley etc. Biden changes the game for him entirely.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
...you should think real hard about why she has less credibility.
It's common knowledge that Bill ran his presidency according to opinion polls, and as Not A Democrat it really looked like Hillary ran her campaign the same way. How else to explain her "I was for it before I was against it" attitude on trade and other assorted issues that Bernie revealed to be popular?
If you actually look at the statements she made about TPP being "the gold standard" etc, she was always talking about it from a hopeful perspective. I don't have my copy of Hard Choices handy, but she makes it clear that she's excited for the deal but knows that it may not be perfect and she may not actually support it in the end. That's well before the primary, and well before Bernie was on anyone's radar (and, as an aside, if anyone pushed Hillary on free trade, it was Warren rather than Sanders).
Her position then was consistent with the position she ultimately took. She was always in favor of free trade, and she always thought TPP could be good, but that individual deals are not necessarily good.
In 2012 she said this about the TPP:
This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment.
That's a pretty clear statement that she thinks that the TPP is most excellent, or that she has really low standards for international trade agreements. You really have to stretch to say that she is only being hopeful about the potential of the deal. Which is fine, because at that point she'd just spent four years negotiating the thing. I don't really expect someone to come out and say that they'd spent four years on something that might have potential, but it definitely sets her up for the flip-flop attack.
First of all, in 2012, she was Secretary of State and not really at liberty to discuss personal views. This wasn't just a case of her praising something because she had (indirectly) been involved with it and didn't want to feel bad, this was a case of her doing her job. The Secretary of State is supposed to be praising the work of the Department of State, even if they have personal, private reservations. Whereas Hard Choices, written 2013-14, after her time as SecState and long before TPP was unpopular, is much more ambiguous about the support.
Second of all, in 2012 the TPP wasn't written yet. There were drafts, but it was years out from being finalized, and there were still many contentious issues that we know changed substantially over the years. So any discussion of TPP in 2012 was implicitly only about the potential of the deal. It's like how every year I say "this is going to be a good year for the Washington Nationals!" despite not actually knowing how the year will turn out (and despite them often falling short in the end). You know when I say that that I'm not a prophet, I don't actually know if they'll make the playoffs, let alone win the World Series, I can only look at the fact that they have a pretty decent team and the framework and potential is there, and then add in a good helping of pure hope.
1) Opposition to the TPP started in 2012, so she wasn't exactly ahead of the curve. Or at least she wasn't far enough ahead that you can easily point to it as evidence of her true feelings.
2) Your argument is basically that we should ignore the 2012 statement because that was her job, and her true opinion is from 2014, which is no more compelling than the argument that her true opinion was from 2012, and her 2014 statements are just her positioning herself for the presidential run.
This is not to say that had she won, she would have reversed on the TPP. Just that arguments that she changed position out of political expediency are very easy to make stick in this instance.
In 2014, there wasn't really a broad movement against TPP except for the same old crowd who would argue against any trade agreements--and she certainly wasn't catering towards them, since her comments were unequivocally pro-free trade. It was only TPP itself that she hedged on (because, again, it didn't actually exist yet and what drafts did exist weren't public yet). Anti-TPP sentiment blossomed in 2015 when a draft was leaked, and then strengthened when Elizabeth Warren took a stand against it. So her statements expressing potential reservations came out over a year before it was an actual political issue.
A diplomat's job is to speak for their country rather than their own feelings. That's their whole point!
Draft sections were leaked in 2013 and 2014, and Paul Krugman, not a member of the usual anti-free trade crowd, had a February 2014 op-ed where he said he didn't think that the TPP was a great idea. It's not like everyone was chill about the thing until 2016.
And that's not even my point. It's that for some reason people are insisting that Clinton didn't change her mind on the TPP, and the argument for that is that when she said that the TPP was the gold standard, what she really meant is 'speaking solely in my role as a loyal member of this administration, I believe the rough draft of the TPP has some potential', and that in fact her actual opinion of the TPP was much more mixed and could be found in her 2014 memoir ($11.52 on Amazon). While this might be an accurate representation of the situation, it is in no way a particularly good argument to be making because it's explicitly saying that her 2012 statement was, basically, bullshit.
It's not about the media pushing a particular candidate, it's the media pushing the conflict. They might look at First Woman President vs. Overcoming Personal Tragedy and think that's enough story to last them. Alternatively, they might think that some three-way action might be the way to go. A situation that I think would be likely, since Biden v. Clinton would probably be a pretty damn boring campaign. Very similar policies and they'd both be pushing the Continuing Obama's Legacy thing to the hilt. Hell, O'Malley might actually have an edge in this hypothetical since you'd have the (relative) youth angle too.
And the media is not the only determining factor here. Iowa and NH are small regions, so getting out and pressing the flesh can get things done, Sanders' policies would be very different than what Clinton or Biden would be pitching, and the caucus system can make things interesting all on its own.
It isn't hard for the media to push conflict between candidates - and there's more to Biden then simply being the Tragedy candidate. Sure it's possible they could go for a 3 candidate race, but I don't see Bernie doing an Edwards with Biden there. Edwards ran equally with Obama and Hillary, temporarily, and I think he was more well known IIRC.
I don't think Biden vs Hillary would be boring, her fights with Obama and Bernie were a matter of degrees not difference of opinion.
No, the media isn't the only determining factor what it is is a vital aspect for candidates getting the messages out. The caucus system only works for Bernie if the media gives him exposure, before the primaries he was an unknown. With Biden in the mix he'll be the second biggest fish in the primary, one who's the previous VP and fighting of inheriting Obama's sounds like media catnip to me. They wouldn't need to push the horse race angle as hard with him nor does he rely on the press telling the public who he is. With him they don't need to go to Bernie for conflict, he was just the only one standing in '16. Which wasn't that hard to do in a race where his only non-Hillary opponents were Chafee, O'Malley etc. Biden changes the game for him entirely.
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
Last year’s election was a watershed in this evolution. Hillary Clinton lost the overall Catholic vote by seven points — after President Obama had won it in the previous two elections.
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So why did they? Certainly his promises to rebuild manufacturing and his tough talk on terrorism were factors. But for many traditional Catholic voters, Mrs. Clinton’s unqualified support for abortion rights — and Mr. Trump’s opposition (and promise to nominate anti-abortion Supreme Court justices) — were tipping points.
Why weren't these tipping points 4 years ago?
like, why would we suppose that Catholics suddenly decided to make abortion way more of an issue instead of going with the more obvious explanation that they were affected by the same reasons as other groups? (i.e. Clinton being a woman, low Democratic motivation, negative media attention)
Last year’s election was a watershed in this evolution. Hillary Clinton lost the overall Catholic vote by seven points — after President Obama had won it in the previous two elections.
...
So why did they? Certainly his promises to rebuild manufacturing and his tough talk on terrorism were factors. But for many traditional Catholic voters, Mrs. Clinton’s unqualified support for abortion rights — and Mr. Trump’s opposition (and promise to nominate anti-abortion Supreme Court justices) — were tipping points.
Why weren't these tipping points 4 years ago?
like, why would we suppose that Catholics suddenly decided to make abortion way more of an issue instead of going with the more obvious explanation that they were affected by the same reasons as other groups? (i.e. Clinton being a woman, low Democratic motivation, negative media attention)
If I were cynical and had a very low opinion of war-on-women voters, I would say that Trump's promise that "there's got to be some form of punishment" against women who have abortions was the tipping point. Sure, the GOP has been anti-women for a long time, but only so far as to restrict or ban women rights. Trump took it a step further with that comment and actually wanted to actively go after women personally.
If I were cynical and had a very low opinion of these people.
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
Hillary proposed the same minimum wage, in places where the economy could support it. And everywhere else she still proposed raising it. Calling the Sanders proposal flatly 25% more is not true.
The same could be said for most of the rest of your examples, just that Hillary had a slightly different take.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
Hillary proposed the same minimum wage, in places where the economy could support it. And everywhere else she still proposed raising it. Calling the Sanders proposal flatly 25% more is not true.
The same could be said for most of the rest of your examples, just that Hillary had a slightly different take.
Hillary wanted to move marijuana from the schedule 1 list, Sanders wanted to decriminalize it. That's a big difference.
Single payer was something Clinton was against, that's a huge difference.
A 25% difference in the minimum wage dependent entirely on where you live is not insignificant. And 'low wages for poor regions' isn't a slogan that gives me the warm fuzzies.
A potential change in our 110% support for Israel all day every day policy would have been huge.
And while her position on the Keystone was the same as Sanders (though it took her longer to announce it), she, as far as I can see, never came out against the Dakota Access one.
The free college proposals were pretty close, but Clinton had work requirements on her proposal, which isn't exactly a trivial difference.
With the exception of gun control, Sanders was consistently, and often by a fair bit, on Clinton's left.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Hillary wanted to move marijuana from the schedule 1 list, Sanders wanted to decriminalize it. That's a big difference.
Single payer was something Clinton was against, that's a huge difference.
A 25% difference in the minimum wage dependent entirely on where you live is not insignificant. And 'low wages for poor regions' isn't a slogan that gives me the warm fuzzies.
A potential change in our 110% support for Israel all day every day policy would have been huge.
And while her position on the Keystone was the same as Sanders (though it took her longer to announce it), she, as far as I can see, never came out against the Dakota Access one.
The free college proposals were pretty close, but Clinton had work requirements on her proposal, which isn't exactly a trivial difference.
With the exception of gun control, Sanders was consistently, and often by a fair bit, on Clinton's left.
Sanders is the most conservative blue state Dem Senator on gun control.
Sanders on Israel has the exact same position as Clinton.
Clinton brought attention to Flint and made it a campaign issue way before Sanders.
Clinton tried to reform banks despite the Sanders attacks, when he literally never introduced or spoke out on a banking regulation bill until he was running for President.
Sanders was simply not to Clinton's left. They have voting records to look at and she wasn't appreciably to Sanders right. She was also to the left of Obama and Warren by most voting metrics for instance.
Sanders wanting a $15 across the board minimum wage was not liberal, it was simplistic. So was his call for single payer without a plan. So was his banking reform proposals. Clinton's plans were superior. Sanders wanted simple answers to complex issues.
And those two combine in his racial, immigrant and ethnic issues. One of his core messages for years has been that the Democrats focus too much on "identity politics." Its been one of his core messages for years, is derived from his core philosophy of old school socialism and at most he obfuscated it during the primary. Traditional socialism dismisses racial, ethnic, religious and gender oppression as a distraction from class conflict. They also tend to dismiss social issues as secondary distractions. Sanders has followed this tradition.
“I’ve been meeting with unionists, independents, progressive Democrats,” Sanders explained via satellite from Columbia, South Carolina. “And they are tired of being abandoned by the national Democratic party. They want some help, and they believe that with some help they can start winning in these conservative states.”
One cause for concern, Sanders explained to Schultz, was seeing many white, working-class voters in “low-income states” like Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina voting against their own best interest.
“These are guys getting hung up on gay marriage issues,” Sanders told Schultz. “They’re getting hung up on abortion issues. And it is time we started focusing on the economic issues that bring us together: Defending Social Security, defending Medicare, making sure that Medicaid is not cut, that veterans’ programs are not cut.”
“I look at these things more from a class perspective,” [Sanders] said.
“I’m not a liberal. Never have been. I’m a progressive who mostly focuses on the working and middle class.”
The difference between a liberal and a progressive focused on workers might seem slim, but it nonetheless shapes how he envisions the potential of the political coalition he hopes to assemble. He believes he can mobilize a working-class coalition spanning ideological divides.
“Ordinary people are profoundly disgusted with the state of the economy and the fact that the middle class is being destroyed and income going to the top 1 percent.”
Many of these people “may not be liberal” or may not “agree with me on gay marriage,” but “they want a fighter,” he said in the cordial conversation.
The issues that could potentially rally disaffected lower- and- middle-class voters “cross traditional liberal-conservative lines,” Mr. Sanders argued. He is in a good position to raise these issues, he said, citing his positions on trade, issues affecting older Americans and the minimum wage.
INSKEEP: Help me understand what's going on here though because you have mentioned the white vote in the past. The African-American working class has been voting for Democrats. If you looked at single women, who were often working class...
SANDERS: You're going into this - Steve, you're going into this demographic stuff, which I reject. That's not my cup of tea.
INSKEEP: Although, you talked about it.
SANDERS: Yes. Well, here's what you got. What you got is an African-American president. And the African-American community is very, very proud that this country has overcome racism and voted for him for president. And that's kind of natural. You got a situation where the Republican Party has been strongly anti-immigration. And you've got a Hispanic community, which is looking to the Democrats for help.
But that's not important. You should not be basing your politics based on your color. What you should be basing your politics on is, how is your family doing?
"Let me ask you," he says, his gangly frame struggling to contain itself to our couch, "what is the largest voting bloc in America? Is it gay people? No. Is it African-Americans? No. Hispanics? No. What?" Answer: "White working-class people." Bring them back into the liberal fold, he figures, and you've got your revolution.
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Over the past two presidential-election cycles, Barack Obama has cobbled together a coalition of outsiders—women, minorities, yuppies, and young people. In 2012, he won the lowest percentage of white voters for a Democratic candidate in 20 years. Especially with the country’s Hispanic population increasing, many Democrats view the Obama coalition as one that will only grow stronger with time. But Sanders, and those around him, are not impressed. “The Obama way,” says the senator’s former chief of staff, Huck Gutman, now an English professor at the University of Vermont, “doesn’t build a lasting coalition. It wins you an election. Obama wins the election and then he runs into all this resistance. He does not have the country behind him.”
.. “How do you have a party that created Social Security lose the senior vote?” Sanders asks me. The answer, he believes, is that seniors have been distracted from the pocketbook issues that should matter most in politics. The Left, in turn, can win them back, along with other white working-class voters, by downplaying the culture wars—what Ralph Nader once called “gonadal” issues—and instead focusing on economic populism.
Of course, Sanders supports gay marriage and abortion rights; he just puts far less emphasis on those questions than he does on economics. “He has an overarching view that transcends our racial and gender differences,” says Tom Hayden, the Students for a Democratic Society hero and former California legislator. “It’s the older view of the socialists who thought class issues could unite all. To ask him to drop that is asking him to change his identity.”
...
I suggest to Sanders that his vision for a new progressive base of old white guys runs somewhat counter to the conventional wisdom, but he cuts me off. “Who told you that?” he scoffs. “I’m talking from a little bit of experience. I did get 71 percent of the vote in my state. And despite popular conception—with all due respect to my friends in California, Northern California, where you have wealthy liberals who support me and I appreciate that—Vermont is a working-class state. So I’m glad you raised that, because your analysis is incorrect. And I’m right and everybody else is wrong. Clear about that?””
Well, you have a situation where, for much of the media, the differentiation between the Democrats and the Republicans are: One party strongly supports gay marriage and gay rights, one party strongly supports the need to address climate change, one party strongly supports immigrant rights, one party has concerns about guns — and the other party is different. In fact, some things, like economics, is for some people not even relevant. The issue is abortion rights. You’re a liberal? You’re for abortion rights. He’s not. You’re a liberal. He’s a conservative. The fact that you voted, as a liberal, to deregulate Wall Street or to give tax breaks for billionaires, we don’t even consider that part of the political discussion.
So I think, and where I’m cautiously optimistic about the future of this country, I never believed in red states and blue states. I don’t believe that. Recently I was in North Carolina, South Carolina, and in Mississippi, and had nice turnouts. And if you talk about economic issues you find that in this country there is a lot more commonality than the inside-the-Beltway pundits understand.
For example, a couple of years ago I helped lead the effort to prevent cuts in Social Security. I worked very, very hard for that. You go out to conservative states, you go out to the Tea Party guys, and you say, “Do you think we should cut Social Security and Medicare?” And they’ll say, “Are you crazy?” And yet here, you have not only a Republican Party moving very aggressively [in that direction]. You have some Democrats.
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So I am not a great fan of this. I understand demographics. But it has to do with what your political values are. And if your value is to expand the middle class of this country, provide healthcare to all people, educational opportunity for all people, it’s not just winning elections. It’s not just being better than another party, which is now an extremist party with racist overtones. You can’t go through your life saying, “Hey, you think we’re bad! You should see them! Vote for me! Yeah, we’re pretty bad, but they’re worse!”
This was all apparent throughout the primary. Ask Sanders a question and it was March before he didn't essentially reject the premise and make it purely a class topic. Post-election he's resumed his long standing position.
Draft sections were leaked in 2013 and 2014, and Paul Krugman, not a member of the usual anti-free trade crowd, had a February 2014 op-ed where he said he didn't think that the TPP was a great idea. It's not like everyone was chill about the thing until 2016.
And that's not even my point. It's that for some reason people are insisting that Clinton didn't change her mind on the TPP, and the argument for that is that when she said that the TPP was the gold standard, what she really meant is 'speaking solely in my role as a loyal member of this administration, I believe the rough draft of the TPP has some potential', and that in fact her actual opinion of the TPP was much more mixed and could be found in her 2014 memoir ($11.52 on Amazon). While this might be an accurate representation of the situation, it is in no way a particularly good argument to be making because it's explicitly saying that her 2012 statement was, basically, bullshit.
2014, of course, being well after the 2012 statement. But that's not all that relevant, anyway. Krugman wrote a lukewarm article that basically amounted to him thinking it doesn't really help, doesn't really hurt, and overall wasn't worth spending political capital on. He was not taking the same stance as people like Liz Warren, who took an unambigous "no" position, and a lukewarm oped doesn't really indicate a major popular movement. I'd be happy to agree with you that Hillary was not the first individual person to oppose TPP, but that fact was never in contention--only whether she was making an insincere but opportunistic switch after it became a big political liability. You still haven't shown any kind of evidence that that's the case.
Yes, what a diplomat says is often "bullshit", if that word can be used to describe someone doing their job instead of always being outspoken about their own beliefs. It's "bullshit" in the same way that it's "bullshit" when a public defender helps out a defendant they know is guilty, or when Neil Patrick Harris pretended to be a 14 year old doctor. Nothing that a diplomat says should be construed as their own personal and private belief, especially when they take a different stance after becoming a private citizen.
Bernie describing Vermont as a working-class state seems bizarre to me. Either that's a label with no meaningful definition or he really doesn't understand the groups he wants to represent. I lean towards the former, to be fair.
Edit: Actually, fuck that. He's contrasting with California here, and if massive agricultural labor doesn't qualify for a 'working-class' definition than Vermont sure as hell isn't making the cut.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
Also, he didn't spend three months fighting a minimum wage increase in Haiti.
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
Also, he didn't spend three months fighting a minimum wage increase in Haiti.
It would be great if we cut back on the out of context claims and outright distortions of events Hillary was involved in.
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
Also, he didn't spend three months fighting a minimum wage increase in Haiti.
That oversimplifies the situation. You're talking about Bush era policies that continued to be pushed by career diplomats (who had largely been put in their contemporary positions by the Bush administration, eg Ambassador Sanderson). And you're ignoring all of the pro-labor policies the US did enact with Haiti.
It's not like Hillary personally called up the Haitian government and was cackling to herself about letting black people starve.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
Also, he didn't spend three months fighting a minimum wage increase in Haiti.
It would be great if we cut back on the out of context claims and outright distortions of events Hillary was involved in.
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
Also, he didn't spend three months fighting a minimum wage increase in Haiti.
It would be great if we cut back on the out of context claims and outright distortions of events Hillary was involved in.
so HRC was in charge of the State Department at a time when they helped push Haiti's already-poverty-level minimum wage even lower
I'm glad we cleared that up
No, she worked on behalf of the administration to put a hold on these particular wage increases because the concern was they would jeopardize the labor reforms set in place by the HOPE II bill.
There were a lot of details around this issue and trying to paint it as some cut and dry issue of Hillary working to lower wages completely ignores that.
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
Also, he didn't spend three months fighting a minimum wage increase in Haiti.
It would be great if we cut back on the out of context claims and outright distortions of events Hillary was involved in.
so HRC was in charge of the State Department at a time when they helped push Haiti's already-poverty-level minimum wage even lower
I'm glad we cleared that up
Placing the blame on Clinton is BS. Not only does the US not set the Haitian minimum wage, but there's no evidence that the State Department even did anything outside the US Embassy in Haiti, starting a year before Clinton became SoS, talking to factory owners in Haiti that opposed it and internally thinking it was bad policy. And almost all of this was before Clinton was SoS, in 2008.
In January 2008, Ambassador Janet Sanderson wrote that representatives of the business community — including the man tasked with implementing HOPE — had met with embassy officials and criticized Haitian President René Préval’s efforts to raise the minimum wage as the wrong medicine for the ailing economy.
An unsigned embassy cable sent to Washington in December 2008 echoed the private sector’s assessment and reported that increasing the minimum wage would "have significant impact" on business.
Clinton didn't become Secretary of State until 2009. The only people even wikileaks have as taking a position are the Haitian Ambassador Janet Sanderson, a career state department diplomat who predated Clinton, and the career diplomat chargé d'affaires Thomas Tighe after she left, who predated Clinton. They argued to Clinton what they thought the position should be, but there's no evidence that Clinton personally adopted or advanced that position directly or otherwise.
I think Mrs. Clinton just stayed out of it, being a new hire in the middle of an ongoing process. She let the more experienced people handle it.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
And those two combine in his racial, immigrant and ethnic issues. One of his core messages for years has been that the Democrats focus too much on "identity politics." Its been one of his core messages for years, is derived from his core philosophy of old school socialism and at most he obfuscated it during the primary. Traditional socialism dismisses racial, ethnic, religious and gender oppression as a distraction from class conflict. They also tend to dismiss social issues as secondary distractions. Sanders has followed this tradition.
I see we really are partying like it's 2016. I wrote quite a bit at the time why I think these are shameless liesabout the history ofsocialism's relation to race and gender. Rather than repackage the old, we might as well look at something new. Wouldn't be poison to actually take note of events continuing to unfold.
Our Revolution, the Sanders campaign spinoff, has their 2017 candidates. Few white guys--then a few black guys, couple hispanic guys, few white women, and a mixed race women (Cheri Honkala is half Cheyenne). This is significantly more diverse than the sitting officialdom of the party, let alone the country. In this respect, their slate seems pretty similar to the last one, the one of whom who most successfully continues to spam me is Pramila Jayapal, who is the first Indian American woman to serve in the House and the first woman from her district. Before entering politics, she was "a Seattle-based civil rights activist... [who] founded immigrant advocacy group, Hate Free Zone... [that] successfully sued the Bush Administration's Immigration and Naturalization Services to prevent the deportation of over 4,000 Somalis across the country." And the last Berniecrat I remember you freaking out about was Tina Podlodowski, a lesbian first-generation Polish immigrant running for chair of the Washington Dem party together with vice-chair candidate Joe Pakootas, the CEO of the Spokane Tribe of Indians.
He will also be at an event in Boston this Friday with said campaign spinoff org, and Elizabeth Warren, which will feature MA activist orgs trying to address incarceration and immigration (which disproportionately affect people of color). Also I recall a WaPo piece on last week's GOP legislative flop highlighting the outcome as partly the result of the pre-women's March town halls that were held to mobilize people in defending the ACA; organized in small part by Bernie's campaign/our revolution apparatus.
But he's a divisive saboteur who clearly deserves as much character assassination as Clinton, because that's what the party rank and file truly care about, ignoring the reality that most Democrats like both politicos.
We can acknowledge his at times blinkered rhetoric on addressing race & immigration, without the implicit narrative that everything he has said is illegitimate. Just like I can refute the claim that Clinton is an "enemy of the poor" despite opening her first primary debate performance with the asinine claim that the middle class was built on people operating small businesses, while wholly ignoring the reality unions played in both increased wages and the government eventually getting into the business of labor protections/regulations.
and no one will care, because no one turns out for mid-terms, just every four years to elect a Magic God-King who will single-handedly fix everything forever from the top down.
He has literally said he wants the party to stop focusing on social issues, and that "identity politics" are unimportant and that it should focus on economic issues because those are the ones that matter. This is over decades, consistently on many many occasions. Its also completely consistent with socialism as a historical movement. None of this should be controversial. If you see that as an attack, take it up with him.
He has literally said he wants the party to stop focusing on social issues, and that "identity politics" are unimportant and that it should focus on economic issues because those are the ones that matter. This is over decades, consistently on many many occasions. Its also completely consistent with socialism as a historical movement. None of this should be controversial. If you see that as an attack, take it up with him.
I don't think that's particularly crazy. Minorities will always be a part of the Democratic party while Republicans are crazy, and money is one of the few things everybody agrees on. Get equal representation in government, then have the diverse group in power make an equal representation platform.
Sure there are flaws, but it seems like a philosophy that is not insane. At the very least it is an option.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
He will also be at an event in Boston this Friday with said campaign spinoff org, and Elizabeth Warren, which will feature MA activist orgs trying to address incarceration and immigration (which disproportionately affect people of color). Also I recall a WaPo piece on last week's GOP legislative flop highlighting the outcome as partly the result of the pre-women's March town halls that were held to mobilize people in defending the ACA; organized in small part by Bernie's campaign/our revolution apparatus.
But he's a divisive saboteur who clearly deserves as much character assassination as Clinton, because that's what the party rank and file truly care about, ignoring the reality that most Democrats like both politicos.
We can acknowledge his at times blinkered rhetoric on addressing race & immigration, without the implicit narrative that everything he has said is illegitimate. Just like I can refute the claim that Clinton is an "enemy of the poor" despite opening her first primary debate performance with the asinine claim that the middle class was built on people operating small businesses, while wholly ignoring the reality unions played in both increased wages and the government eventually getting into the business of labor protections/regulations.
As an aside, the question was specifically about whether she was a capitalist and so she gave an answer about capital and entrepreneurship. She wasn't ignoring unions so much as it not being all that relevant to the question.
Edit: Neither did she ignore the government getting involved, she mentioned the government "saving capitalism from itself" in her answer.
He has literally said he wants the party to stop focusing on social issues, and that "identity politics" are unimportant and that it should focus on economic issues because those are the ones that matter. This is over decades, consistently on many many occasions. Its also completely consistent with socialism as a historical movement. None of this should be controversial. If you see that as an attack, take it up with him.
I don't think that's particularly crazy. Minorities will always be a part of the Democratic party while Republicans are crazy, and money is one of the few things everybody agrees on. Get equal representation in government, then have the diverse group in power make an equal representation platform.
Sure there are flaws, but it seems like a philosophy that is not insane. At the very least it is an option.
Yes it is. Its the one put forth by Thomas Franks, Tim Ryan and Ed Schultz and others, he's not alone in this. I think its wrong strategically and morally. Outside of recessions, people vote their tribe (whether its church, race, ethnicity, etc) much more passionately than they vote their pocketbook. There's a reason socialism traditionally divides the world into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Its also why its traditionally tried to downplay race, gender and religious divides - because at its core it requires the workers to see themselves as one unified tribe to act for. Americans (and essentially the people of any diverse society) don't see themselves that way and are not going to any time soon in my opinion.
But if you are willing to moderate the party on race, gender, nativity and sexuality and on social liberalism - by dilution if nothing else - then that effects how "liberal" your philosophy is. And that's doubly true if you want that moderation not for pragmatic electoral reasons but because economic issues are that much more important than social issues or issues based on personal identity.
It is amusing how socialism is explained by you in such a simplistic and definitive way, yet upthread you criticize Sanders for having had simplistic answers on policy, never mind that @MrMister has explained, quite extensively, the role race, and racial minorities in America, played in the late 19th/early 20th century labor movements which dovetailed with socialist politics at the time.
He has literally said he wants the party to stop focusing on social issues, and that "identity politics" are unimportant and that it should focus on economic issues because those are the ones that matter. This is over decades, consistently on many many occasions. Its also completely consistent with socialism as a historical movement. None of this should be controversial. If you see that as an attack, take it up with him.
I don't think that's particularly crazy. Minorities will always be a part of the Democratic party while Republicans are crazy, and money is one of the few things everybody agrees on. Get equal representation in government, then have the diverse group in power make an equal representation platform.
Sure there are flaws, but it seems like a philosophy that is not insane. At the very least it is an option.
Taking the minority vote for granted is basically the first, second, third, fourth, and last criticism of the Democratic Party from minority activists. And they have concerns that go beyond class issues because a rising tide lifts their boat considerably less than white people's boat.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
It is amusing how socialism is explained by you in such a simplistic and definitive way, yet upthread you criticize Sanders for having had simplistic answers on policy, never mind that @MrMister has explained, quite extensively, the role race, and racial minorities in America, played in the late 19th/early 20th century labor movements which dovetailed with socialist politics at the time.
Sanders' simplistic answers put the what up front and postponed the how until later. He used the same emotion-driven engine that Trump did to run roughshod over Clinton's realistic responses.
Also the average white union member has been anti-minority for decades. They wanted George Wallace to be the nominee in the sixties and early 70s, Nixon did far better than any Republican previously had with them, and then they famously voted for Reagan (as "Reagan Democrats"). Bernie wants to bring them back into the party. He thinks what amounts to New Deal liberalism would do that when the the party ran on literally New Deal liberalism + civil rights legislation when they switched parties. And whites without college educations flocked to Trump, again, same reasons. Bernie's theory of the electorate is flat wrong. It vastly underestimates the power of race in American politics, which historically is the most powerful force in American politics.
We need to target different voters rather than the same ones (culturally speaking, obviously not many of the literal same voters) we've been failing to win back for fifty years.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
He has literally said he wants the party to stop focusing on social issues, and that "identity politics" are unimportant and that it should focus on economic issues because those are the ones that matter. This is over decades, consistently on many many occasions. Its also completely consistent with socialism as a historical movement. None of this should be controversial. If you see that as an attack, take it up with him.
I don't think that's particularly crazy. Minorities will always be a part of the Democratic party while Republicans are crazy, and money is one of the few things everybody agrees on. Get equal representation in government, then have the diverse group in power make an equal representation platform.
Sure there are flaws, but it seems like a philosophy that is not insane. At the very least it is an option.
Yes it is. Its the one put forth by Thomas Franks, Tim Ryan and Ed Schultz and others, he's not alone in this. I think its wrong strategically and morally. Outside of recessions, people vote their tribe (whether its church, race, ethnicity, etc) much more passionately than they vote their pocketbook. There's a reason socialism traditionally divides the world into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Its also why its traditionally tried to downplay race, gender and religious divides - because at its core it requires the workers to see themselves as one unified tribe to act for. Americans (and essentially the people of any diverse society) don't see themselves that way and are not going to any time soon in my opinion.
But if you are willing to moderate the party on race, gender, nativity and sexuality and on social liberalism - by dilution if nothing else - then that effects how "liberal" your philosophy is. And that's doubly true if you want that moderation not for pragmatic electoral reasons but because economic issues are that much more important than social issues or issues based on personal identity.
A two group ideology for a two party system kind of makes sense. It seems like something we haven't tried, which is naturally attractive when what seems like the most reasonable course fails.
Moderation and liberalism are not mutually exclusive terms and I'm beginning to see that putting people on a scale from liberal to conservative is stupid. Everyone has facets of belief that exist on that scale but as a whole spread over the entire range. I bet everybody has at least one ultraliberal or ultraconservative belief, and their actual label that matters for the election is determined by a subgroup of beliefs and not the dilution of the whole. People vote according to tribe because only a few beliefs determine how they vote. They could be liberal one election and conservative the next depending on which belief has the limelight.
People may be passionate about their identities, but they only have two choices. If one choice is marginally better than another, either they vote for it, or maybe voting wasn't one of their passions. People can have tons of identities, and appealing to all of them is a delicate balancing act. Money is much simpler. You're rich or you're not so rich. No need to juggle anything there.
It's an option.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It's an issue of messaging. There are definitely voters who simply won't come back unless Democrats go half racist again (like John Bel Edwards in Louisiana who won and passed that hideous police-hate-crime law), but i think what's needed is a little Trump-style showmanship. If white voters need to be coddled, coddle them. Just make it clear that your message is inclusion. American Dream for all and all that malarkey.
He has literally said he wants the party to stop focusing on social issues, and that "identity politics" are unimportant and that it should focus on economic issues because those are the ones that matter. This is over decades, consistently on many many occasions. Its also completely consistent with socialism as a historical movement. None of this should be controversial. If you see that as an attack, take it up with him.
I don't think that's particularly crazy. Minorities will always be a part of the Democratic party while Republicans are crazy, and money is one of the few things everybody agrees on. Get equal representation in government, then have the diverse group in power make an equal representation platform.
Sure there are flaws, but it seems like a philosophy that is not insane. At the very least it is an option.
Taking the minority vote for granted is basically the first, second, third, fourth, and last criticism of the Democratic Party from minority activists. And they have concerns that go beyond class issues because a rising tide lifts their boat considerably less than white people's boat.
You have a point. The problem is that minority voting power kind of sucks right now. Mrs. Clinton did everything right and didn't get enough love where it counted. The reasons matter less than the fact that the way the Democratic party builds a minority bloc isn't working. Waiting until the next redistricting is an option, but so is holding your nose and getting people back in the Capitol and then getting to work.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Also the average white union member has been anti-minority for decades. They wanted George Wallace to be the nominee in the sixties and early 70s, Nixon did far better than any Republican previously had with them, and then they famously voted for Reagan (as "Reagan Democrats"). Bernie wants to bring them back into the party. He thinks what amounts to New Deal liberalism would do that when the the party ran on literally New Deal liberalism + civil rights legislation when they switched parties. And whites without college educations flocked to Trump, again, same reasons. Bernie's theory of the electorate is flat wrong. It vastly underestimates the power of race in American politics, which historically is the most powerful force in American politics.
We need to target different voters rather than the same ones (culturally speaking, obviously not many of the literal same voters) we've been failing to win back for fifty years.
The Democrats haven't been trying for fifty years.
Also the average white union member has been anti-minority for decades. They wanted George Wallace to be the nominee in the sixties and early 70s, Nixon did far better than any Republican previously had with them, and then they famously voted for Reagan (as "Reagan Democrats"). Bernie wants to bring them back into the party. He thinks what amounts to New Deal liberalism would do that when the the party ran on literally New Deal liberalism + civil rights legislation when they switched parties. And whites without college educations flocked to Trump, again, same reasons. Bernie's theory of the electorate is flat wrong. It vastly underestimates the power of race in American politics, which historically is the most powerful force in American politics.
We need to target different voters rather than the same ones (culturally speaking, obviously not many of the literal same voters) we've been failing to win back for fifty years.
The Democrats haven't been trying for fifty years.
Yes, they have.
Like shit, what do you think the "New Democrats" or 90s Clinton stuff or all that other shit progressives complain about was all in service of?
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In 2014, there wasn't really a broad movement against TPP except for the same old crowd who would argue against any trade agreements--and she certainly wasn't catering towards them, since her comments were unequivocally pro-free trade. It was only TPP itself that she hedged on (because, again, it didn't actually exist yet and what drafts did exist weren't public yet). Anti-TPP sentiment blossomed in 2015 when a draft was leaked, and then strengthened when Elizabeth Warren took a stand against it. So her statements expressing potential reservations came out over a year before it was an actual political issue.
A diplomat's job is to speak for their country rather than their own feelings. That's their whole point!
In Which An Irish Catholic Man Argues the Democrats Must Join the War on Women
I recommend starting fires, or catching errant paint
It isn't hard for the media to push conflict between candidates - and there's more to Biden then simply being the Tragedy candidate. Sure it's possible they could go for a 3 candidate race, but I don't see Bernie doing an Edwards with Biden there. Edwards ran equally with Obama and Hillary, temporarily, and I think he was more well known IIRC.
I don't think Biden vs Hillary would be boring, her fights with Obama and Bernie were a matter of degrees not difference of opinion.
No, the media isn't the only determining factor what it is is a vital aspect for candidates getting the messages out. The caucus system only works for Bernie if the media gives him exposure, before the primaries he was an unknown. With Biden in the mix he'll be the second biggest fish in the primary, one who's the previous VP and fighting of inheriting Obama's sounds like media catnip to me. They wouldn't need to push the horse race angle as hard with him nor does he rely on the press telling the public who he is. With him they don't need to go to Bernie for conflict, he was just the only one standing in '16. Which wasn't that hard to do in a race where his only non-Hillary opponents were Chafee, O'Malley etc. Biden changes the game for him entirely.
Draft sections were leaked in 2013 and 2014, and Paul Krugman, not a member of the usual anti-free trade crowd, had a February 2014 op-ed where he said he didn't think that the TPP was a great idea. It's not like everyone was chill about the thing until 2016.
And that's not even my point. It's that for some reason people are insisting that Clinton didn't change her mind on the TPP, and the argument for that is that when she said that the TPP was the gold standard, what she really meant is 'speaking solely in my role as a loyal member of this administration, I believe the rough draft of the TPP has some potential', and that in fact her actual opinion of the TPP was much more mixed and could be found in her 2014 memoir ($11.52 on Amazon). While this might be an accurate representation of the situation, it is in no way a particularly good argument to be making because it's explicitly saying that her 2012 statement was, basically, bullshit.
I don't know man, you seem to be coming at this with the view that the primary was going to be Clinton vs. Not-Clinton, and the details of Not-Clinton didn't really matter. Sanders was well to the left of Clinton, and he'd have been even further to the left of Biden, so there's plenty of policy space for him to carve out a chunk of voters with Biden and Clinton splitting the remainder. If you want to say that Sanders' support was mostly anti-Clinton sentiment, and different media coverage would have sent that straight over to Biden, then fine. I just don't agree with that take.
Why weren't these tipping points 4 years ago?
like, why would we suppose that Catholics suddenly decided to make abortion way more of an issue instead of going with the more obvious explanation that they were affected by the same reasons as other groups? (i.e. Clinton being a woman, low Democratic motivation, negative media attention)
If I were cynical and had a very low opinion of war-on-women voters, I would say that Trump's promise that "there's got to be some form of punishment" against women who have abortions was the tipping point. Sure, the GOP has been anti-women for a long time, but only so far as to restrict or ban women rights. Trump took it a step further with that comment and actually wanted to actively go after women personally.
If I were cynical and had a very low opinion of these people.
Not really? Most of the time their policy positions were pretty closely aligned, except that Clinton often had more nuance. For example their difference on raising the minimum wage.
I don't see how Sanders was well to the left of Hillary.
Single Payer, advocating a minimum wage that was 25% higher than Clinton proposed, decriminalization of marijuana, free college, the Israel-Palestine situation, opposition to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. We're talking about a self described Democratic Socialist who was pitching Sweden but with fewer lingonberries.
So, most of the reason why McConnell held back Garland was to dangle a SCOTUS seat in front of them. It worked.
Hillary proposed the same minimum wage, in places where the economy could support it. And everywhere else she still proposed raising it. Calling the Sanders proposal flatly 25% more is not true.
The same could be said for most of the rest of your examples, just that Hillary had a slightly different take.
Hillary wanted to move marijuana from the schedule 1 list, Sanders wanted to decriminalize it. That's a big difference.
Single payer was something Clinton was against, that's a huge difference.
A 25% difference in the minimum wage dependent entirely on where you live is not insignificant. And 'low wages for poor regions' isn't a slogan that gives me the warm fuzzies.
A potential change in our 110% support for Israel all day every day policy would have been huge.
And while her position on the Keystone was the same as Sanders (though it took her longer to announce it), she, as far as I can see, never came out against the Dakota Access one.
The free college proposals were pretty close, but Clinton had work requirements on her proposal, which isn't exactly a trivial difference.
With the exception of gun control, Sanders was consistently, and often by a fair bit, on Clinton's left.
Sanders is the most conservative blue state Dem Senator on gun control.
Sanders on Israel has the exact same position as Clinton.
Clinton brought attention to Flint and made it a campaign issue way before Sanders.
Clinton tried to reform banks despite the Sanders attacks, when he literally never introduced or spoke out on a banking regulation bill until he was running for President.
Sanders was simply not to Clinton's left. They have voting records to look at and she wasn't appreciably to Sanders right. She was also to the left of Obama and Warren by most voting metrics for instance.
Sanders wanting a $15 across the board minimum wage was not liberal, it was simplistic. So was his call for single payer without a plan. So was his banking reform proposals. Clinton's plans were superior. Sanders wanted simple answers to complex issues.
And those two combine in his racial, immigrant and ethnic issues. One of his core messages for years has been that the Democrats focus too much on "identity politics." Its been one of his core messages for years, is derived from his core philosophy of old school socialism and at most he obfuscated it during the primary. Traditional socialism dismisses racial, ethnic, religious and gender oppression as a distraction from class conflict. They also tend to dismiss social issues as secondary distractions. Sanders has followed this tradition.
Sanders opposed Immigration Reform because it would hurt the "white working class." Here he is agreeing with overt racist Lou Dobbs in 2007
And 2013 because Immigration hurts American workers
He thinks we should de-prioritize social issues like abortion in order to Southern white men.
And especially he thinks race and gender is given far too much attention in the Democratic party.
http://mtpr.org/post/sen-bernie-sanders-how-democrats-lost-white-voters
2014 2014 Salon
This was all apparent throughout the primary. Ask Sanders a question and it was March before he didn't essentially reject the premise and make it purely a class topic. Post-election he's resumed his long standing position.
edit fixed broken tag and missing link
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2014, of course, being well after the 2012 statement. But that's not all that relevant, anyway. Krugman wrote a lukewarm article that basically amounted to him thinking it doesn't really help, doesn't really hurt, and overall wasn't worth spending political capital on. He was not taking the same stance as people like Liz Warren, who took an unambigous "no" position, and a lukewarm oped doesn't really indicate a major popular movement. I'd be happy to agree with you that Hillary was not the first individual person to oppose TPP, but that fact was never in contention--only whether she was making an insincere but opportunistic switch after it became a big political liability. You still haven't shown any kind of evidence that that's the case.
Yes, what a diplomat says is often "bullshit", if that word can be used to describe someone doing their job instead of always being outspoken about their own beliefs. It's "bullshit" in the same way that it's "bullshit" when a public defender helps out a defendant they know is guilty, or when Neil Patrick Harris pretended to be a 14 year old doctor. Nothing that a diplomat says should be construed as their own personal and private belief, especially when they take a different stance after becoming a private citizen.
Edit: Actually, fuck that. He's contrasting with California here, and if massive agricultural labor doesn't qualify for a 'working-class' definition than Vermont sure as hell isn't making the cut.
Also, he didn't spend three months fighting a minimum wage increase in Haiti.
It would be great if we cut back on the out of context claims and outright distortions of events Hillary was involved in.
http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-suppressed-haitis-minimum-wage/
That oversimplifies the situation. You're talking about Bush era policies that continued to be pushed by career diplomats (who had largely been put in their contemporary positions by the Bush administration, eg Ambassador Sanderson). And you're ignoring all of the pro-labor policies the US did enact with Haiti.
It's not like Hillary personally called up the Haitian government and was cackling to herself about letting black people starve.
so HRC was in charge of the State Department at a time when they helped push Haiti's already-poverty-level minimum wage even lower
I'm glad we cleared that up
No, she worked on behalf of the administration to put a hold on these particular wage increases because the concern was they would jeopardize the labor reforms set in place by the HOPE II bill.
There were a lot of details around this issue and trying to paint it as some cut and dry issue of Hillary working to lower wages completely ignores that.
Placing the blame on Clinton is BS. Not only does the US not set the Haitian minimum wage, but there's no evidence that the State Department even did anything outside the US Embassy in Haiti, starting a year before Clinton became SoS, talking to factory owners in Haiti that opposed it and internally thinking it was bad policy. And almost all of this was before Clinton was SoS, in 2008.
http://www.politifact.com/global-news/statements/2016/apr/21/lee-camp/did-hillary-clintons-state-department-help-suppres/
Clinton didn't become Secretary of State until 2009. The only people even wikileaks have as taking a position are the Haitian Ambassador Janet Sanderson, a career state department diplomat who predated Clinton, and the career diplomat chargé d'affaires Thomas Tighe after she left, who predated Clinton. They argued to Clinton what they thought the position should be, but there's no evidence that Clinton personally adopted or advanced that position directly or otherwise.
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Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I see we really are partying like it's 2016. I wrote quite a bit at the time why I think these are shameless lies about the history of socialism's relation to race and gender. Rather than repackage the old, we might as well look at something new. Wouldn't be poison to actually take note of events continuing to unfold.
Our Revolution, the Sanders campaign spinoff, has their 2017 candidates. Few white guys--then a few black guys, couple hispanic guys, few white women, and a mixed race women (Cheri Honkala is half Cheyenne). This is significantly more diverse than the sitting officialdom of the party, let alone the country. In this respect, their slate seems pretty similar to the last one, the one of whom who most successfully continues to spam me is Pramila Jayapal, who is the first Indian American woman to serve in the House and the first woman from her district. Before entering politics, she was "a Seattle-based civil rights activist... [who] founded immigrant advocacy group, Hate Free Zone... [that] successfully sued the Bush Administration's Immigration and Naturalization Services to prevent the deportation of over 4,000 Somalis across the country." And the last Berniecrat I remember you freaking out about was Tina Podlodowski, a lesbian first-generation Polish immigrant running for chair of the Washington Dem party together with vice-chair candidate Joe Pakootas, the CEO of the Spokane Tribe of Indians.
But #BernieSoWhite etc. etc., stay relevant
But he's a divisive saboteur who clearly deserves as much character assassination as Clinton, because that's what the party rank and file truly care about, ignoring the reality that most Democrats like both politicos.
We can acknowledge his at times blinkered rhetoric on addressing race & immigration, without the implicit narrative that everything he has said is illegitimate. Just like I can refute the claim that Clinton is an "enemy of the poor" despite opening her first primary debate performance with the asinine claim that the middle class was built on people operating small businesses, while wholly ignoring the reality unions played in both increased wages and the government eventually getting into the business of labor protections/regulations.
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I don't think that's particularly crazy. Minorities will always be a part of the Democratic party while Republicans are crazy, and money is one of the few things everybody agrees on. Get equal representation in government, then have the diverse group in power make an equal representation platform.
Sure there are flaws, but it seems like a philosophy that is not insane. At the very least it is an option.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
As an aside, the question was specifically about whether she was a capitalist and so she gave an answer about capital and entrepreneurship. She wasn't ignoring unions so much as it not being all that relevant to the question.
Edit: Neither did she ignore the government getting involved, she mentioned the government "saving capitalism from itself" in her answer.
Yes it is. Its the one put forth by Thomas Franks, Tim Ryan and Ed Schultz and others, he's not alone in this. I think its wrong strategically and morally. Outside of recessions, people vote their tribe (whether its church, race, ethnicity, etc) much more passionately than they vote their pocketbook. There's a reason socialism traditionally divides the world into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Its also why its traditionally tried to downplay race, gender and religious divides - because at its core it requires the workers to see themselves as one unified tribe to act for. Americans (and essentially the people of any diverse society) don't see themselves that way and are not going to any time soon in my opinion.
But if you are willing to moderate the party on race, gender, nativity and sexuality and on social liberalism - by dilution if nothing else - then that effects how "liberal" your philosophy is. And that's doubly true if you want that moderation not for pragmatic electoral reasons but because economic issues are that much more important than social issues or issues based on personal identity.
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Taking the minority vote for granted is basically the first, second, third, fourth, and last criticism of the Democratic Party from minority activists. And they have concerns that go beyond class issues because a rising tide lifts their boat considerably less than white people's boat.
We need to target different voters rather than the same ones (culturally speaking, obviously not many of the literal same voters) we've been failing to win back for fifty years.
A two group ideology for a two party system kind of makes sense. It seems like something we haven't tried, which is naturally attractive when what seems like the most reasonable course fails.
Moderation and liberalism are not mutually exclusive terms and I'm beginning to see that putting people on a scale from liberal to conservative is stupid. Everyone has facets of belief that exist on that scale but as a whole spread over the entire range. I bet everybody has at least one ultraliberal or ultraconservative belief, and their actual label that matters for the election is determined by a subgroup of beliefs and not the dilution of the whole. People vote according to tribe because only a few beliefs determine how they vote. They could be liberal one election and conservative the next depending on which belief has the limelight.
People may be passionate about their identities, but they only have two choices. If one choice is marginally better than another, either they vote for it, or maybe voting wasn't one of their passions. People can have tons of identities, and appealing to all of them is a delicate balancing act. Money is much simpler. You're rich or you're not so rich. No need to juggle anything there.
It's an option.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
You have a point. The problem is that minority voting power kind of sucks right now. Mrs. Clinton did everything right and didn't get enough love where it counted. The reasons matter less than the fact that the way the Democratic party builds a minority bloc isn't working. Waiting until the next redistricting is an option, but so is holding your nose and getting people back in the Capitol and then getting to work.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The Democrats haven't been trying for fifty years.
Yes, they have.
Like shit, what do you think the "New Democrats" or 90s Clinton stuff or all that other shit progressives complain about was all in service of?